Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Interesting read. It makes me think when I was at school all the other children were seemingly obsessed with grid paper, using it for every class, writing all notes only on grid paper. Grid paper was also the most available and most normal paper at our schools.

In contrast to the other children and in contrast to the author of this text, grid paper wasn’t inviting for me, instead it was feeling like oppressively giving me direction that I don’t want. I would ignore the grid and see the grid as something like dirt on the paper. Only a bit later I discovered that I could buy smooth and dense note paper that was completely blank. Ever since then I mostly use 100 g/m2 white A4 paper; rarely also A5.

I love the liberating feel of white paper. After a few years I even learned how to write justified text on blank white paper, it feels very satisfying.




I like both, but they lead to very different thinking patterns. Hand me blank paper for a grid paper problem or vice versa and it doesn't work. Likewise, the size has to be right - big for brainstorming or free-thinking creative thought and small for bringing order to a chaotic mess.


I found a happy medium with dot-grid notebooks. The dots are faint enough that you can ignore them and treat parts of the page like a blank sheet while using other parts for organized lines or sections.


I love dot grid too!

I also like the ability to change papers in Goodnote when I'm working digitally. Using dot or grid for layout and then switching to plain so it looks clean = YES.


> After a few years I even learned how to write justified text on blank white paper, it feels very satisfying.

Neat! How do you justify text by hand as you go?


As soon as I’m getting closer to the right hand margin I know which words I will put down next and I know how wide every letter is that I write, then I adjust the words and the spaces such that I end on a word border or syllable border.

If it’s a word border it’s already justified, if it’s a syllable border I hyphenate. My hyphens and punctuation marks I leave purposely outside of my justification margin, I like that presentation.

I can do it with text widths as wide or narrow I want.

Sometimes I just know what the layout is going to look like and adjust my margins and spaces accordingly, kind of like in a LaTeX document.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: